Christmas Weekend

This is a little overdue and mostly everyone has moved on to the next event on the agenda: New Year's Day. But just in case you're curious about how I spent my Christmas, well, here ya go.

A friend of mine said today, "Basically, Christmas here sucks." It's true albeit blunt.

As mentioned in my previous post, it's like all the chaos of Christmas happens here too, but the fruits of one's labor (the family time, the down time, the delicious food) is completely absent. I was feeling some pressure to overcompensate missing Christmas at home by doing something extravagant here. Well, that thought lasted about 5 minutes before I got a headache thinking of ways to make Christmas feel like Christmas despite the missing elements of what makes Christmas Christmas (got that?).

Because it was beyond cold on Saturday, Jamie and I decided against ice skating & bike riding and instead, we went to Dongdaemun Market to buy some fabrics and other various supplies. Although most of the market was closed, there were a few stands that were open. After an hour there, we went to Samcheong-dong, which I've mentioned before as one of my favorite places in Seoul, to grab some lunch. We mistakenly went into an Italian restaurant off the main road. (Word to the wise: unless you have a specific recommendation from an expat on where to go for some good Italian, don't try it here. It's just sub-par...like always.)

After lunch, we walked around a bit but it was getting way too cold for our liking, so we headed back to my apartment for an evening of sewing, gluing and movie-watching. Four sewing projects and three movies later, we finally went to bed around 2 a.m. It was a really relaxing day, and in my honest opinion, it couldn't have been any better :)

[Those 2 pillow cases were sewed by hand by yours truly!]

[With the extra fabric, I made an iPod case]


[This is the result of being completely engrossed by Inception: a crooked pouch :(]

The next day, I met up with my cousins Jimmy and Ji-Hye for dinner and coffee. Again, it was beyond freezing, so we spent most of our time inside of Starbucks. As always, it was great catching up with them.

[We had Mexican food in Gangnam, which in my opinion, was eh-ok...nachos weren't bad]

[Tacos were so-so]


[Silliness...]




[There wasn't a single empty seat in there!]

By Monday morning, I was feeling pretty rested and content. Then, my day got a whole lot better after I received some very exciting news from my mom on my Facebook wall: "4 Calling Birds, 3 French Hens, 2 Turtle Doves, and a round trip ticket to Seoul for mom"

For those of you who don't know, I've been incessantly begging my mom to come to Korea for awhile now. But after her continuous refusal, I kind of gave up. But dad turned on the charm and pulled this little trick out of his sleeve, so we're all good to go now ;)

Hope you all had a beautiful weekend and a great first half to the last week of 2010!